Saturday, September 29, 2007

I would not dissuade a student from metaphysical inquiry; on the contrary, I would rather endeavour to promote the desire of entering upon such subjects: but I would warn him, when he tries to look down his own throat with a candle in his hand, to take care that he does not set his head on fire.

In the city angels spire,moonlight falling on their wings;each is a harp of mystic fire.The wind, their very heart's desire,sweeps across their starlit strings:they quiver, straighten, sigh, and sing.

I heard one night their carols playedacross the moonlit meadow's grass.Each note, like soft and silver rays,upon the breeze would dance and swayand leap; then lightly would it pass,like whispers straying from God's Mass.

When I once, a blond-bright child,looked into the sunset sky,I saw a city, blessed and wild,never ruined nor yet defiled,glory-vaulting in clouds on high;each sunset brings that city nigh.

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

I find that Jevons, in Lesson XIX his Elementary Lessons in Logic, has a nice little discussion of the fact that conditional statements can be handled without leaving categorical syllogistics. This is the point I mentioned earlier about the fact that every conditional statement can be treated as a categorical proposition of A form. Thus, we can take the argument

If iron is impure it is brittle ; But it is impure ; Therefore it is brittle.

And convert it to

Impure iron is brittle ; The iron in question is impure iron ; Therefore the iron in question is brittle.

Which is (basically) a Barbara syllogism. He then goes on to note:

It will now be easily made apparent that the fallacy of affirming the consequent is really a breach of the 3rd rule of the syllogism, leading to an undistributed middle term.

(One might ask if there is a fallacy in propositional logic corresponding to the fallacy of illicit process of the minor. Indeed there is, but I don't know if it has ever been given a name. It occurs in arguments of the form: p → q; p → r; therefore q → r. Arguments of this form put into categorical form are always cases of the fallacy of illicit minor.)

Early in his life, Berkeley developed the belief that sense perceptions form a language by which the originating mind (God) communicates information to us. This is one of the primary contentions of his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, the first major philosophical work he published. His claim is that the whole of the physical world is a series of signs which always have the same meaning. We shall see later that this consistency is a critical feature of reality.

I think it's a great time to be studying Berkeley, because there are some long overdue changes in the air, in which the old clichés are being swept away and a closer consideration of Berkeley's work is becoming more common. The features of the 'New Berkeley' are, roughly this:

(1) One of the most important concepts in Berkeley's philosophy is signification; and the real center of his philosophical work is his view that the world is constituted by signs (the divine language Kenny mentions).(2) While he's a nominalist 'epistemologically', he's a Platonist speculatively. That is, he's definitely a Platonist, although a nondogmatic one; he manages to combine this with typical empiricism (which tends to be very un-Platonist) by the means of his focus on the divine language. (There is some room to think that his Platonism is developed over time, i.e., that he becomes more Platonistic as time goes on. This question is an important one for Berkeley scholarship in the years ahead.)(3) Berkeley's immaterialism, and particularly the negative part (the attack on materialism), has to be put into historical context to be properly understood, and should never, ever be construed as suggesting that the external world does not exist. Rather, it's a rigorous criticism of a very common (especially in the eighteenth century) way of understanding what that external world is.(4) Far from just being thrown in as an ad hoc device in the Principles to save knowledge of minds, the term 'notion' is important, because on Berkeley's view of the mind, the primary cognitive activity is not perception of ideas but understanding of signs (which perception of ideas subserves).(5) Far from being an inconsistency, Berkeley's appeal (in a number of his works) to particles (e.g., of light) is entirely consistent with his more general views.

These shifts in interpretation, although in places in need of refinement, have all the advantage of actually taking the evidence more seriously than anyone has for a long time. As I said, an exciting time for studying Berkeley. At present I'm not sure I entirely like the gloss in terms of domains of quantification that Kenny suggests in his post, although it does have the advantage of sticking reasonably close to Berkeley's interest in signs and language, and although I have definitely used similar language myself. It seems to me to be much closer than standard interpretations, but still to be missing something (although I can't quite put my finger on what). If I find out what, I'll let you know.

* The Tsalagi (a.k.a. Cherokee) syllabary. I've always found this to be a fascinating subject. Cherokee, of course, was originally not written at all; but a Cherokee silversmith by the name of Sequoyah, who was also called George Gist, changed all that. After the war of 1812, Sequoyah began to experiment with different ways to organize a writing system, and finally hit on the basic syllabary that made the Cherokee Nation a literate and literary nation almost overnight, and which, with some modifications due to typography, is still in use today. This website has a pronunciation guide for each syllabic letter. Here is Sequoyah's original syllabary.

* Incidentally, although (depending on where you live) you might not have heard it, there is a big dispute at present between the Cherokee Nation and some members of Congress. In March of this year the Cherokee Nation voted in a constitutional amendment to restrict membership in the Nation to those of Cherokee descent. This might not seem all that controversial, but those who are primarily blocked from citizenship by this amendment are the Freedmen, former slaves of Cherokees. Because of this, Congressperson Diane Watson introduced legislation (HR 2824) that would sever with government relations with the Cherokee Nation, cutting off federal funding and recognition. The official position of the Cherokee Nation is that the amendment is currently undergoing judicial review, both in tribal and federal courts, and that the matter should be left to the courts.

* Ralph Luker collects some of the responses to Rauchway's defense of academic freedom. I've long since come to the conclusion that, when it is used rhetorically, 'academic freedom' is often just an excuse academics put forward for acting like self-indulgent prima donnas; but it's worth reminding oneself that, however much academics abuse it (and abuse is not difficult to find, I think), there is a way to think through the notion of academic freedom rationally so that it is shown to have great importance -- great enough that it deserves to be emphasized despite abuses. And one gets some of this by reading Rauchway's brief discussion in combination with the responses to it.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

As to Hegel's two general peculiarities in the history of philosophy, or at least of European philosophy, I should like to concentrate for a moment upon the fact that he was the last of four profound revolutions, of veritable thunderstorms or earthquakes, in the history of the German, indeed of the European, philosophical mind. All these four upheavals took place well within a single generation. There is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781); Fichte's Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Science (1794); Schelling's Concerning the Ego as Principle of Philosophy, or Concerning the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge (1795); and, finally, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1806). These are four profoundly differing proclamations, each nevertheless holding itself to be final, and valid to the end of time. The first insists that we are undeniably aware of things other than ourselves, and yet that we remain abidingly ignorant of what these things are in themselves. The second insists that the world which we recognize as real around us and within us is, in proportion to its value, the creation of our heroic wills. The third proclaims the identity everywhere of Subject and Object as the two forms of the one Absolute, which is itself without consciousness or personality of any kind. And, finally, comes the full and detailed articulation of that identity outlook into a huge system, inclusive of all science, ethics, politics, religion, and stressing the self-movement, the self-alienation, and then the return to itself of the Spirit, everywhere in the three stages of position, opposition, and composition. No changes as profound as this have ever occurred, at least in European philosophy, so close together, and so entirely amongst the same people; hence there is no wonder that these four huge oscillations have produced, I feel very sure, one effect more far-reaching and regrettable than any one of them has produced within its own range. This effect has been the production of a contempt and fear of all that calls itself philosophy amongst the average educated men throughout the world. I say this with a full consciousness of what I mean. There was Döllinger, who had this precise feeling towards all philosophy; he handed on this feeling to Lord Acton, and Lord Acton handed it on to spiritual sons of his well known to myself, and they again to their disciples. All these men had, and have, nothing but an impatient, amused, superior smile for that frothy, shifting, arrogant, over-self-confident, overweening thing men will call philosophy.

An angel in heaven was flyingto and fro o'er all the earth;an angel in a loud voice crying,"How many, O sons of men?"

How many men are fallen, O sons of men,how many are dead and dyingin great Ascalon and Tyre?How many widows are cryingwhere the blood flows down like waterfrom the horse's smashing hoof?

How many young men lie dead, sons of men?How many in the grave unwed,where roses grow, and poppies,in the bloody fields of war?How many, O ye nations?How many slip into darkness,whose face will be seen no more?How many men are fallen, sons of men?

In starlit skies, brightly shining,Mars has wandered to work his will.In the midst of all our feastinga formless hand has writour sorrow on walls of joy.

We see it on gilded tables,in the secret and familiar places,on the heads of children at play,on their foreheads and on their faces:"Quick pickings and easy prey".

Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.